September 15, 2007

The Times, They Are a-Shamin'

The New York Times has become the leading voice for surrender in Iraq. More even than most of the Democrats (or any of the Democratic presidential candidates except, perhaps, Bill Richardson), the Times editors' demand for defeat has become almost hysterical, as if someone had taken their families hostage: "If dat President, whatsisname, Bush don't get outa Iraq, you'll never see yer kids again!"

Unlike most of the Democrats, the Times follows the complete Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY, 95%) line:

Bush lied us into the war in the first place;

Al-Qaeda was never in Iraq before 2003, and probably isn't there today;

Victory is unachievable;

The "surge" is a miserable failure that has actually made things worse militarily;

Notwithstanding (4), the amazing success in Anbar, Diyala, Salahuddin, and Baghdad provinces -- where Sunni tribes have risen up in angry defiance of al-Qaeda, have fought alongside American forces against al-Qaeda, and have more or less driven al-Qaeda out of those provinces -- were not caused by anything America did, and particularly anything President Bush did: They happened "in spite of" the counterinsurgency strategy, not because of it;

All troops should be withdrawn immediately and precipitously, in as ragged a mob and as humiliating a retreat as possible, in order to punish America and teach us a good, hard lesson about electing Republicans;

Any and all resultant damage to the American military, American prestige, American hegemony in the region, stability in the region, the containment of Iran and Syria, and to any American ally in the region (cough-cough the Jews cough-cough) is entirely and exclusively the fault of George W. Bush and the Republicans... even though the GOP has argued consistently against the policy advocated by the Times.

At the moment, they're beavering away at convincing everyone of (4), and they have focused upon two -- only two -- specific complaints they have: that the Iraqi national parliament has been unable so far to pass a bill establishing the rules by which foreign oil leases can be signed by provinces, and that a particular tribal sheikh who was friendly to us, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, was slain, presumably by al-Qaeda.

This seems a remarkably thin reed on which to base a conclusion of utter despair, hopelessness, and belly-crawling to our enemies. Let's take the last first...

Although it's a tragedy that Abu Risha was assassinated, it's sheer lunacy to imagine that the Sunni response to such an affront will be to meekly return to life under the leash. For heaven's sake, it was precisely this sort of high-handed butchery and depostism that drove the Sunni tribes away from al-Qaeda and into alliance with the Coalition to fight them, as Lt.Col. Dave Kilcullen so ably recounts in an article he wrote for Small Wars Journal, "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt." The more likely result will be a redoubling of the anti-terrorist combat effort by Sunni Iraqis... which is already an oversimplification, as is virtually everything in the Times' argumentum, as the tribes in question include both Sunni and Shiite members.

That is, if slaughtering tribal sheikhs led to the tribes turning against al-Qaeda in the first place, how can the chowderheaded editors at the New York Times argue that a couple more assassinations will put the djinn back in the bottle?

And as for their triumphant crowing that the oil-revenue-sharing law "seems to be collapsing," the editors should stop sucking up to MoveOn.org and start reading Big Lizards. As I noted some time ago, all of these issues in Iraq will be settled, not by a top-down, authoritarian, nationalist parliament... but by the opposite process: Individuals will settle with individuals, tribe with tribe, province with province, region with region. Once all that is accomplished, then parliament may step in and ratify the "facts on the ground."

As far as the instant case, provinces will simply start negotiating oil leases with various companies... as Kurdistan is now doing:

The legislation has already been presented to the Iraqi Parliament, which has been unable to take virtually any action on it for months. Contributing to the dispute is the decision by the Kurds to begin signing contracts with international oil companies before the federal law is passed. The most recent instance, announced last week on a Kurdish government Web site, was an oil exploration contract with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas.

The Sunni Arabs who removed their support for the deal did so, in part, because of a contract the Kurdish government signed earlier with a company based in the United Arab Emirates, Dana Gas, to develop gas reserves.

Leave aside the obvious double standard... the Democrat-controlled American Congress has yet to ratify a single one of the major budget bills for next fiscal year, which starts October 1st, I believe; they have languished in joint reconciliation committees for months now. Instead, let's cut to the heart of the Chuck Schumer-New York Times position: What the Times sees as "contributing to the dispute" is actually the beginning of the solution. The next step is for the Sunnis to start negotiating their own blasted agreements with Hunt and Dana Gas and Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon, agreements not only to develop the small amount of proven reserves in areas held by mostly Sunni tribes, but also to explore in the untapped and potentially vast reserves of oil and especially natural gas that are just now being reported in those same "Sunni" areas.

Once Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish provinces are signing oil leases like mad, then and only then will the Iraqi parliament move to ratify the system that will, by then, have evolved. Unlike (alas) the court system, the legislature is typically a lagging indicator -- not a leading indicator; they await strident demands from their constituents before they will act... as I would put it, they only work when threatened.

It's the same here as in Iraq... easily shown by the recently enacted (hah) comprehensive immigration reform bill, the privatization of Social Security and Medicare bill, the litigation-reform bill, and the defense-of-marriage constitutional amendment. Or for that matter, those budget bills, which are far less controversial but appear every bit as contentious.

The only available metric right now for how the counterinsurgency strategy is working -- is that contained within the strategy itself: It can only be evaluated by how well it protects the Iraqi population and reduces the violence from al-Qaeda and from Shiite militias, not by proxy measurements: whether the Iraqi parliament has passed a particular bill, how many American troops have been killed recently, or how well it satisfies the deep, defeatist desires of the elite media. And on the only valid metrics, the so-called "surge" has succeeded much better than expected.

All else is dicta.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 15, 2007, at the time of 12:31 AM

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» The Liberal Argument Demonstrated from Joust The Facts
Derrick Z. Jackson, perhaps the most clueless of the Boston Globe columnists (though, to be fair, there is a lot of competition for that title), attempts today to refute some of the statements made by President Bush in his speech [Read More]

Tracked on September 15, 2007 11:44 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: AMR

I can only imagine that the NYT's editors believe everyone is like them. If they were attacked maybe they would surrender. But hold on, wait a minute, they saw an attack down the street, killing people they may have known or maybe were even relatives and they are willing to surrender. So they only have to imagine they could be attacked or see others attacked and they surrender. But they want to take all of us with them and because the Democrats took back congress, the majority of Americans must want to surrender. Well nobody I know wants to surrender, so the NYT must be wrong, right! Or could it be that I run in the wrong circle being a veteran, living in rural county in my blue state of Maryland, outside of the beltway, not in an urban area or college campus; in an obvious area populated by the unwashed minority of the Jacksonian Scotts-Irish culture residue. Just like those fools in Red Dawn.

The above hissed in response by: AMR at September 16, 2007 6:57 PM

The following hissed in response by: Noocyte

This speaks to something which really stood out to me during Petraeus and Crocker's testimony: the extent to which a healthy dollop of the political progress which we are supposedly not seeing appears to be arising from the bottom up (unofficial revenue sharing, local accommodations and conciliations and compromises), even as the Iraqi National Government (ING) sputters and falters and flounders to enact it, legislatively, from the top down.

In addition to the Democrats' more obvious and general commitment to American defeat and retreat, and willful impenetrability to anything which resembles progress in any case, something else occurred to me as I was tracking and occasionally dropping a comment into the Powerline live-blogging of the 2nd day's testimony last week:

I wonder if maybe statist, Great Society types like the leftist Dems are hard-wired to be unable to recognize the legitimacy of any social change which is not handed down by the anointed bureaucrats of a Central Nanny Structure. The very notion that a bunch of tribal and community folk and their local leaders could bring about meaningful political progress whose main effect is not to demolish the polity is downright...libertarian (i.e., anathema). The idea that such a thing could happen in Iraq, without the careful planning and regulatory training wheels of a Government Program skirts dangerously close to the heretical notion that folks in this country might not be too stupid to manage similar feats of our own!

And that simply would not do!

The above hissed in response by: Noocyte at September 17, 2007 12:16 PM

The following hissed in response by: Noocyte

This speaks to something which really stood out to me during Petraeus and Crocker's testimony: the extent to which a healthy dollop of the political progress which we are supposedly not seeing appears to be arising from the bottom up (unofficial revenue sharing, local accommodations and conciliations and compromises), even as the Iraqi National Government (ING) sputters and falters and flounders to enact it, legislatively, from the top down.

In addition to the Democrats' more obvious and general commitment to American defeat and retreat, and willful impenetrability to anything which resembles progress in any case, something else occurred to me as I was tracking and occasionally dropping a comment into the Powerline live-blogging of the 2nd day's testimony last week:

I wonder if maybe statist, Great Society types like the leftist Dems are hard-wired to be unable to recognize the legitimacy of any social change which is not handed down by the anointed bureaucrats of a Central Nanny Structure. The very notion that a bunch of tribal and community folk and their local leaders could bring about meaningful political progress whose main effect is not to demolish the polity is downright...libertarian (i.e., anathema). The idea that such a thing could happen in Iraq, without the careful planning and regulatory training wheels of a Government Program skirts dangerously close to the heretical notion that folks in this country might not be too stupid to manage similar feats of our own!

And that simply would not do!

The above hissed in response by: Noocyte at September 17, 2007 12:22 PM

The following hissed in response by: Noocyte

Gorram double-post!!

Sorry.

The above hissed in response by: Noocyte at September 17, 2007 12:24 PM

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